Sunday, 6 September 2009

Garden Makeover

With major project at work handed over and first stage of garden makeover completed (see below) , time to start on my 'breakthrough' piece for Contemporary Quilt.Last weekend was spent stabilising the hazel hurdle screening, finalising the layout of paving stones and Ian carrying bags of gravel which I slit and raked around. We're very pleased with the final result. Apart from feeling smug that we did it ourselves, it looks even better than we'd hoped. It seems a long way from March when we were laying down newspaper squares on the lawn to mark where the paving might go and using hosepipe to indicate the edge.

The paving stoness and gravel were delivered over the Easter holidays ( each bag and slab carried through the house individually.....)

Then with some hacking back of vegetation , 'whirligig' dryer relocated and metal edging in position, Ian took over turf cutting duties.

Soil raked and compacted, membrane laid then a haitus in activities -not helped by swine flu!

We completed the gravel laying on Sunday afternoon and polished off the last of the Pimms still in our extremely dirty gardening clothes.

Which gave use Bank Holiday Monday for play!

Ian has long wanted to roast green coffee beans and after mixed results with a frying pan in his old flat, we requested a popcorn maker as a wedding present.

Four years on and time had finally come to experiment. We plugged the popcorn maker in the external extension lead and placed it on the patio - just as well as the action spits out the husks everywhere and gets extremely hot. After the 2nd 'crack' the beans were poured out into a frying pan to cool down.

We couldn't wait to grind and brew some in cafetiere for 'brunch'. Very nice too and a big caffeine hit.